Sunday, May 28, 2017

THE JOYS OF RECOVERY AND SOME GOSSIP

Dearest Buhari,

You know, to be honest, the most difficult part about you being away is not being able to spend time with you in the other room. But I will manage. As that Zamfara man rightly mentioned, God punishes human fornication with calamities like meningitis. I slept wrong the other night and woke up with just a bit of a stiff neck and thought for a moment that I perhaps had a visitation of God for my bad thoughts. But then it went away — it is a relief that God doesn't punish us for thoughts. Are you having bad thoughts my dear?

So I must tell you some gossip I heard. I don't know how true this is, but the wife of the Lagos guy, she went to church last weekend — she does so from time to time, praise God — and the silly pastor annoyed her. Can you imagine that he did not call her up first to be anointed with anointing oil? What if the oil had finished? What would she have told her husband if, after going to church and returning without getting something as basic as an anointing, he accused her of not being there at all? It is not like we have a video, and you know that without a video it did not happen. What if the Lagos guy started suspecting his wife of branching off to see some lover? What if this led to chaos? What if that in turn led to him doing something shameful that would lead to say, his impeachment? Surely that pastor put the great state of Lagos in great peril by not promptly giving that woman her anointing before all the other humans in the church. Humans are equal but some humans are more deserving of anointing oil than others. The biggest issue though is, I think that pastor should be arresting for peddling fake anointing and fake anointing oil. The news reports say that although she was furious, she still waited her turn to be anointed. Should authentic anointing not have quelled the spirit of anger inside her? Instead, right after receiving the anointing, she stormed out of the church, instigated the firing of the pastor and made her husband cancel events that were planned to be held at the church. An anointing that leaves one even more angry than before, is that one an anointing?

So I am wondering, what is your deputy doing? He promised to finalize the investigation of your thieving former secretary a couple of weeks ago and has still not said anything. I like closure. He should come out publicly and tell us how much your secretary stole and if we need to refer the matter to the police or EFCC. Or are some people too big to be visited by EFCC? We need to show that we have no sacred cows even though, going by his size your former secretary seems to have consumed many many cows, sacred and non sacred.

So I hear someone from our embassy has leaked to the press that your health has improved significantly. They say you are very close to being declared hale and hearty. I love it when you are hale and hearty. So let me remind you what hale and hearty people do. They talk to their darlings and the people who love them. Now that you are doing alright, can we at least do a FaceTime video chat? Nothing naughty, no nudes or anything — I know you may not have the energy for that. But just let me see your face my Bubu. Also, you know the members of your household who haven't seen or heard from you in a long while might need proof of life so that they do not go and start working for other people. Just a short 45 second video beginning with “Fellow Nigerians”. You haven't done that in a while and I know they will love it.

One British man went on Twitter the other day announcing that you had died. He was even giving condolences to your wife! (I admit, as your preferred darling I was jealous). Imagine! He even tweeted at me to ask if I knew where you were, almost gloating that you had died. In my mind I said, it is your darling who will die not mine, nonsense!I wanted to tweet that but I didn't want to give him any room to say anything more so I just told him that we had WhatsApp’d and that you were doing just fine. Which is why I am happy that the embassy quickly leaked how you are doing ok and recovering quickly and all. I will just call it bad belle. What is his business with your health? What is his business if you have not spoken to us in a long while? Is it his family? He should go and face his Brexit and leave us alone jare.

I heard one of your houseboys told the press that the reason we are still holding that Shiite man whose children we massacred is that we want to protect him. It sounds like a good excuse I must admit. But I still think that it is better if we just let him and his family go so that we don't have to give great excuses like that in the future. What do you think?

Again, your deputy is doing well but like I promised the last time, nothing he does will make me change my mind about you. Nothing he does will make me cheat on you. For one thing I am afraid of the Zamfara man’s God and of his meningitis. And another is that your deputy is too short and wears too dark clothes for me to abandon for my darling and follow him. I like tall men. Especially tall men who wear white.

Lies I tell about myself

Elnathan is a writer and lawyer living in Nigeria. His works have appeared in Hazlitt, Per Contra, Evergreen Review, FT and the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology 2013&2014. He writes weekly for Sunday Trust(and any other publication that PAYS him). Except you are The New Yorker, he considers it violence of unimaginable proportions to ask him to write for free. He has never won anything. This record was almost disrupted by the Caine Prize when they accidentally allowed his story on the shortlist in 2013 and in 2015. Of course, both times, he did not win. In 2008, after being lied to by friends and admirers about the quality of his work, he hastily self-published an embarrassing collection of short stories which has thankfully gone out of print. He hopes to never repeat that foolish mistake. His novel Born on a Tuesday is out in Nigeria and will in the UK (April 2016) the US (May 2016), and Germany (in German 2017) and he hopes that apart from his 5 friends, others will buy the book. However, nobody seems to want to publish his collection of short stories. This puzzles him. He really loves those stories.Elnathan is touchy about his skin and man boobs and isn't bold enough to grow hair. One of his new goals is getting to a weight below his current 100+kg and losing his fast growing beer belly.